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Tanzania’s girls flee their families — and marriage

MUGUMU, TANZANIA—The girls erupt from the roadside bushes, their brilliant shawls swirling behind them as they beeline for the idling car.

They clamber into the back, wide-eyed and breathing hard.

School is out, and girls like Dorika are fleeing their families to save their childhoods and, maybe, save their lives.

The cutting season has begun, and safe house staff are busy.

The December rains mark not only the end of the school term but the start of the four-week period when girls in Tanzania’s northern Mara region typically are forced to endure female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female circumcision or, simply, cutting. Men in the Kurya and Mungurimi tribes are brought up to believe that msagani — uncut girls — are unclean and unfit for marriage.

“My mother threatened to bind my arms and legs and have me cut by force if I refused,” says Dorika, speaking through a translator.

Dorika fled her home in Masinki, two hours west of Mugumu, two weeks ago, terrified about stories of young girls bleeding to death, their cursed bodies dumped in the bush where the wild things are.

Five girls in Machochwe village died during last year’s cutting season — and those are just the reported deaths.

FGM has been illegal in Tanzania since 1998, but many tribespeople still believe the life-threatening procedure is a mandatory rite of passage into womanhood — and an indicator to men in the village the girl is now ready to get married. A 2010 government survey found that in the Mara region 40 per cent of girls and women had been cut.

Tanzania does not rank among the countries with the highest rates of child marriage — four in 10 girls are wed before their 18th birthdays — but in many regions it is a significant problem.

Here, in Mara, 55 per cent of girls are forced into marriages, although the actual figure is likely higher, masked by the remoteness of rural communities and by corrupt police and court officials ignoring cases in exchange for bribes.

The lure of lucrative dowries of livestock for impoverished parents perpetuates the inextricably linked practices of FGM and child marriage.

Daughters become cash cows, at the expense of a girl’s schooling and health.

Funded by donations from the Anglican Church, construction of this sanctuary was barely completed in time for the cutting season in December 2014. It offers girls not only refuge during the cutting season but, with two classrooms, a temporary return to normal life.

But the safe house has become a victim of its own success. What began as a trickle of girls has rapidly turned into a flood. Designed for 40 occupants, more than 160 girls like Dorika fled to Mugumu in December. At night, the classrooms transform into makeshift dormitories where girls sleep three to a bed.

Samwelly feels unable to turn any of them away. She was only 13 when she was pushed into FGM by her parents.

“I thought about running away,” she says. “But where could I go, how would I get food, where would I sleep?”

Abuse and pain

A young woman named Mama Mary faced the same dilemma more than 10 years ago.

She was forced to undergo FGM at age 11 and was married to an older husband at 13. Starting from their wedding night, Mama Mary was subjected to a decade of physical and sexual violence — all for the price of 10 cows.

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“I think he beat me harder than any other woman has been beaten,” Mary says, revealing a gap where three teeth were knocked out by her husband.

She begged him to end the violence.

“I will only stop beating you when our first daughter undergoes FGM,” he told her. “Then the dowry I paid for you will be repaid.”

Her husband is now in jail, but life is still hard for Mama Mary.

With three young children, her only income is from making charcoal which she sells in town for a dollar a bag.

“They learn about computers and tailoring,” she says wistfully of the girls at the safe house. “Things that could have given a better life for me and my kids.”

That’s the hope for girls like Dorika. Their schooling continues, and they’re making new friends.

They are rediscovering what it means to be children.

About the project

Funding

The graphic novel, stories and videos about child marriage and FGM in Tanzania were produced with aid from the $25,000 Fellowship for International Development Reporting, a joint program of Aga Khan Foundation Canada and the Canadian Association of Journalists. The fellowship is part of Aga Khan Foundation Canada’s public engagement programming, which aims to help Canadians gain a better understanding of international development issues. The program gets financial support from the Canadian government.

Marc Ellison was awarded one of two inaugural fellowships to report on the complex topic of child marriage in Tanzania through the medium of an interactive, multimedia graphic novel.

The project has been translated into Swahili in the hope it can be used as an educational tool in the communities where FGM and child marriage still thrive.

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Marc Ellison

Ellison is an award-winning photojournalist based in Glasgow, Scotland. He has worked extensively in Africa since 2011, reporting on female child soldiers in Uganda, sex workers in Mozambique and Sudanese refugee camps. Ellison has produced work for 60 Minutes, Al Jazeera, BBC, the Guardian, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and Vice.

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Daniel Lafrance

Lafrance is a professional storyboard artist with more than 30 years in the animation industry. In 2014, his graphic novel adaptation of Sharon E. McKay’s novel War Brothers — about children forced to become child soldiers for the LRA in Uganda — was nominated for an Eisner Award. Originally from Quebec, he now lives in Toronto with his wife and son.

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